October 1929
T h e
K i n g ’ s
461
B u s i n e s s
The Rational Basis of the New Birth B y L eander S. K eyser , D. D. (Address Delivered at the Summer School of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles)
I. C hr istian ity and I ntellectual C ulture ’ ICODEMUS, who came to Jesus by night, be gan the conversation by paying Jesus a com pliment. He said: “Rakbi, we know that thou j art a teacher come from God: for no man , can do these miracles that thou doest, ex cept God be with him” (John 3:2). But Jesus, apparently, paid no attention to his salutation, but seemed to divert the conversation into another channel by saying: “Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except any one be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). (The American Revision says “born anew” ; margin, “born from above.” In either case it would signify a supernatural event. It should also be remembered that the Greek uses \ the term tis, which means, not “a man,” but “any one.” So we have trans lated it literally in the text.) Of course, there was a logical connection between the statement of Nicodemus and our Lord’s reply, which might be phrased in this way: “If you look upon me merely as a Jewish rabbi and a miracle-worker, you have too low a conception of me, that is, a merely external and intellectual one. The only way by which you may come really to understand me and the principles of mv kingdom is by being born again.” But Nicodemus was utterly nonplused by Christ’s answer. He exclaimed: “How can a man be born when he is old?” Jesus did not stop to explain to him the mys tery of the new birth, but repeated His previous state ment, only in somewhat different phraseology: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except any one be born o f water and o f the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Then bficodemus, as it were, “threw up his hands,” and exclaimed, “How can these things be?” This incident leads us to offer some observations on the relation of the Christian religion to intellectual culture. Nicodemus was an educated man. We know this from several circumstances: he was a Pharisee; he was a mem ber of the Jewish Sanhedrin; Jesus called him “a master o f Israel.” Perhaps he was a graduate of the University of Jerusalem, and may have sat at the feet of teachers like Hillel and Gamaliel. Yet he could not understand what Jesus meant by the new birth. These facts lead to a further remark: A man might be a highly educated man from the academic viewpoint, a veritable savant; and yet might be only an abecedarian in spiritual lore. Some one has put it rather poetically, nevertheless truly, in the following way, which we will not attempt to quote literally, but will express in our language: , A man might be a great astronomer, so that he could talk learnedly about the stars and planets of the heavens and their wonderful movements in the universe; and yet he might not be able to discover “the Star of Bethlehem.” A man might be a great botanist, able to speak learnedly about all the flowers, plants and trees, and give their tech
nical scientific names and classifications ; and yet he might not be able to identify “the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley.” Again, a man might be a great geologist, able to discourse in an erudite way about the rocks and fossils and the diversified strata of the earth’s formation; and yet he might not know how to take his stand on “the Rock of Ages.” Once more, a man might be a learned mathematician, competent to solve all the problems of his recondite science; and yet he might not be able to solve the most fundamental and important problem of all, name ly : What it would “profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.” N o ! History and experience prove that no one can become a Christian by a mere intellectual process. Wheth er learned or unlearned, men are not made Christians in that way. Christians are made by being “born again.” Sometimes inquiring persons are puzzled over this cir cumstance. To make the matter concrete, they may put their problem in this form: Here is a very learned man, a veritable Solon, with many scholastic titles attached to his name; yet he does not believe Jesus Christ to be the Saviour of the world and the Bible to be the inspired Word of God. On the other hand, here is another man who is equally erudite, with just as many academic titles appended to his name; yet he is a devout believer in Christ and the Bible. How, then, asks the earnest inquirer, are we to decide where great doctors disagree? We would not chide the questioner because of his mental dilemma; yet his conundrum may be solved in a very simple way: The first man mentioned is not an un believer because he is so highly educated in the academic sense, but because he has never been “born again.” The other man in this comparison is not a believer because of his great intellectual acquisitions, but because he has had the experience of the “new birth.” That experience, and that alone, makes the difference between the believer and the unbeliever, the Christian person and the worldling. It may be said that these are purely dogmatic state ments. Thus far, we grant, they may seem to be so ; but they are based on reasonable premises. Suppose our re ligion depended on erudition and long-drawn and minute historical and scientific investigations; then the vast ma jority of people never could become Christians. Yet many of the best and most useful Christian people we have known have never attended a college or a university; have never, so to speak, brushed their clothes against academic walls. A religion that is meant to be universal, as the Christian religion certainly is, should be available to everybody. The Christian religion is available; for every person, lettered or unlettered, can, if he will, come to God in the name of Christ through the narrow gateway of repentance and faith, and receive the experience of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. It is not a difficult or complex or protracted process. Yet this method does, be it frankly said, demand humility and submission. That requirement, however, is reasonable; for a docile attitude of mind is necessary in
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